


xiv. is something burning?

by tempestaurora



Series: the kids aren't alright [whumptober 2020] [14]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Apocalypse, Gen, Sibling Bonding, There's some happy moments too, Time Travel, Trauma, Vanya Survives The First Apocalypse, Whumptober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27007735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempestaurora/pseuds/tempestaurora
Summary: Vanya wakes up in the apocalypse and finds her missing thirteen-year-old brother, Five, peering over her.She destroyed the world and now she had to live with the consequences and, apparently, her subconscious' manifestation of her guilt. Because Five couldn't really be here... could he?
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Series: the kids aren't alright [whumptober 2020] [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1930186
Comments: 32
Kudos: 223





	xiv. is something burning?

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Fire
> 
> imashadowalker prompted: AU in which Vanya survives the Apocalypse thanks to her powers and grieves the 4 siblings she killed (before meeting the one she lost first)

Vanya had never known fire like this.

All-encompassing, ever-burning, shredding through every fibre of every being on the planet. The heat was practically unbearable, but something kept her alive, something kept her breathing.

_Power_ was the answer. It was _power_ that kept her going – this thrumming, living white energy that curled around her lungs and squeezed all through the inferno. This blue energy field that surrounded her when the darkness consumed her, a night sky with no moon, a planet with no humanity, before she was finally able to come back to herself.

And then she saw the corpses.

There’d been plenty of times that Vanya had been thankful to not be Klaus, and this was one of them. She tried picturing the ghosts who would be haunting her now she destroyed the world and it would’ve been suffocating.

Vanya stepped through the rubble and ash. Her boyfriend was dead, as was everyone else she’d ever known; her orchestra, her neighbours, her siblings.

The anger had drained from her but the pain still remained. Allison rumoured her, Luther locked her up. But she didn’t have it in her to think they _deserved_ this – not anymore. Now she was immeasurably sad, inconceivably broken.

She sat for a long time in the ruins where her siblings’ bodies laid as corpses, and then she went to sleep.

*

Five downed the coffee and smirked at his sister. She suited the white hair, he thought, though it was still sometimes disconcerting to see it. Vanya placed her mug on the counter and glanced over at The Handler, who was waiting with her aggravating stare.

He thought, _Five years of this and then we’ll settle somewhere. Anywhere but the end of the world._

He thought, _I’m going to kill The Handler and burn the Commission down._

He thought, _I’m going to get us home._

Vanya said, “Where to, boss?” and took her gun from the counter.

*

Vanya was shaken awake, and in that moment, she was back in Leonard’s apartment, being woken in the morning with the news that she was running late to rehearsal. She was _always_ late when she stayed at Leonard’s – his bed was so much comfier than hers.

“Five more minutes,” she muttered anyway.

“V—Vanya? Seven? Is it you?”

She furrowed her brow, blinking her eyes open. There was a lot of light, though the sky was an ashy grey above her. And there was a face, a familiar one; the one she caught sight of in dreams, always a little out of her reach.

“Five,” she breathed. He was just as she remembered him; young, large eyes, pristine uniform. He’d come to haunt her after she ended the world. Vanya supposed she deserved it and sighed, shutting her eyes again.

“Vanya,” he said, his hands shaking her shoulder. “Oh, my God—come _on_. Are you hurt? What happened? What is all of this?”

She waved a vague hand. “You know what this is,” she told him, told herself, he just a personification of her manifesting guilt.

“Vanya!” He yelled this and she bolted upright, angry.

“Go away!” she shouted back. “Why are you here _now?_ Why couldn’t I see you when Ben died or when I left home, or when I _actually needed you?_ Why are you here _now?_ I don’t need to be reminded of all my mistakes!”

Five shuffled backwards and Vanya let a sob tear through her. Had she cried since the end of the world? Doubtful. Now she was allowing herself to, it came out in painful sobs that rolled through her whole body. She curled in on herself, let it all out. She’d killed billions. She’d brought down the moon. She’d torn her family apart. And now she was seeing the ghost of her missing brother.

“Vanya,” Five breathed, and his voice sounded wrong, so she looked up and saw the tears streaming down his cheeks, mirroring her. Oh, she made her subconscious manifestation cry.

“Five,” she said, and reached out a hand. He still looked like her brother, whether he was really him or not. Almost immediately he tumbled forward into her grasp and they clung to each other, crying and sniffling and not letting go. Vanya pressed her cheek into his hair.

“Is everyone dead?” he asked.

Vanya didn’t respond. Just felt the softness of his hair on her cheek and felt glad she could remember it so clearly that she could provide her guilty conscience with that part of him.

*

Five waited in the alley with the briefcase in his hand. He checked the time on his watch. Vanya was running two minutes late. Annoying, but he’d cope. The deal was not to go in after her until ten minutes had passed – she was ridiculously powerful and had picked up combat training in adulthood as easily as any of them had as children; she could handle herself.

When Vanya finally turned the corner into the alley, Five was at the eight minute mark.

“You’re late,” he said.

“I was picking up ice cream,” Vanya replied. She held out a cone for him and Five rolled his eyes before taking it, settling the briefcase on the floor between his legs.

“How’d it go?” he asked, trying the ice cream. Vanya always picked the best flavours, the strangest combinations. This was mint and raspberry and he had to admit that the swirls worked together, somehow.

“Easy,” she said, taking a lick of her own dessert. It looked like swirls of yellow and brown. He pointed to it and she replied, “Mango and chocolate. Want to try?”

He did, so they switched ice creams for a moment, before passing them back. “I think I’m close, you know.”

“I know,” she replied. “But we’ve gotta be prepared for _after._ ”

“Vanya, the Commission can come after us all the want—”

“Not that,” she said, and he knew that, which is why he’d said it; he didn’t want to acknowledge the real problem they’d face. “Paradox Psychosis is a real thing,” she told him, “and we’ve got to talk about how we’re going to kill a previous incarnation of myself without dooming the present me.”

Five rolled his eyes. “Can’t we just let you both live?”

“It’ll be easier to stop the apocalypse if I die.”

“Sure, but if we break it to you easily, it’ll work out. _And_ if we keep you away from Peabody. You can just live separate lives, maybe each choose a different city—”

“And miss out on having my _family_ back?”

“Or she chooses a different city—”

“And have me miss out on having a family at all?”

Five rolled his eyes. He took a big bite of ice cream just to make Vanya pull a face at him. “There’s no pleasing you,” he said.

“Funny, that’s what I always think about you.”

*

Vanya laid back on the ground, her guilty conscience sitting beside her. She felt like she mimicked the corpses better this way.

“You gotta tell me what happened,” Five said.

Vanya hummed. “I don’t know why I should do that; you already know. Are you trying to get me to admit to wrongdoing? Be _honest_ or whatever? Because I’m tired of honesty; honesty destroyed the world.”

“Vanya,” Five huffed. “Everyone’s _dead_ —”

“I know that. And you know that because I know that.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

She sighed, then hummed and held her hands up towards the ash-ridden sky. So much power in those hands. She’d felt swept away by them the night before; like power flooded through her whole body and drowned her. She knew sound was important to make the power work; her violin, now lost or broken or ash; the creek out in the forest; the wind as it curled through the now-fallen skyscrapers of New York.

At the end of the world, there was little sound for her to work with.

“How did this happen?” Five asked again, his voice harder than before. He was losing patience with her, Vanya noted. He always had a particular tone for that.

“The moon fell from the sky,” she said, “and it crashed into the Earth.”

Five exhaled. “How did it fall? What about its orbit?”

“Enough power can knock anything out of place,” Vanya replied.

“So, a supervillain?”

“Perhaps. You wanna know how they won?” Five nodded in her periphery. “The _Academy_ is a bit out of practise; didn’t know how to stop them. So they just made them mad, made them hurt, locked them up and threw them to their lowest possible point. And _that’s_ when the power came out—”

“Were you there?”

Vanya considered her hands before dropping them at last. She sat up. “You know I was.”

*

Five span in his chair listlessly as an Infinite Switchboard tech scrolled through footage, searching for the right event. Across from him, Vanya braided her stark white hair and then unravelled it before beginning again.

She hummed. “Do you remember when we snuck out for the fair?”

Five glanced over at her. “And Allison threw up after we span the teacups too fast? Yeah.”

“I think she threw up because she ate six churros right before the ride,” Vanya mused. “Oh, and the _funnel cake._ I miss funnel cake.”

“Mm – do you remember when Diego won Klaus that stuffed unicorn?”

She smiled faintly. “It had a zip in the back – that’s where Klaus stashed his drugs, actually.”

“For real?”

“Yeah, but that was only until Dad took the cameras out of our rooms when we were fifteen. Then he started stashing _everywhere…_ I miss him.”

“Me, too.”

The Infinite Switchboard tech gestured to them.

“You got something?” Five asked. They peered at the monitor.

“Oh, yeah,” Vanya said. “That’s the target. You got the briefcase?”

“Always do,” Five replied.

“Then let’s get going.”

They vanished in a blue flash of light.

*

Vanya dug the graves for the siblings she’d killed, and she and Five buried them in the ground, marking their resting places with rocks and rubble. Night had flooded the sky by the time they were done, and the fires that still raged gave everything an orange glow. Vanya sat at the foot of the graves and stared up at the moonless sky. _Her doing._ All hers.

Five asked, “How did Ben die?” which she found strange. Vanya wasn’t aware that her conscience still felt guilty over his death, almost fifteen years before. She didn’t answer, because she didn’t know, because no one ever told her every detail of the mission gone wrong. She imagined the eldritch horror in his chest destroyed him, though; tore him apart and broke his body to pieces until all that remained were tentacles.

Five sighed at her silence and flopped back on the dirt. “Why’s your hair white?” he asked next.

Vanya fingered the slither that had turned white with the end times. A whole lock, from root to tip, a bright white. “Probably something to do with my powers,” she replied absently.

“Powers?” Five sat back up. “You have _powers?_ For real?”

She pulled a face at him, his face half-lit orange. “Obviously I have powers,” she replied, rolling her eyes.

“Well, _sor-ee_ – but last time I saw you, you didn’t,” Five responded.

“Yeah, well, I guess that’s because Dad doped me up since I was a child,” she said, then clenched her hands into fists. “Kept me locked in the basement. Made me numb. Lied to me, made me _forget._ Made me think I was _ordinary._ ” She stood and kicked a nearby stone at the demolished building ahead of her. “Made me useless, isolated, unloved. Everyone in that whole fucking house—they knew it. They all knew. I bet you felt the same—”

“Vanya?”

“I was worthless, there. Worthless wherever I went; even after I got out. And you know what? I stopped taking my pills for three days and I immediately got first chair, I _immediately_ felt normal and worthwhile and loved, I _immediately ended the fucking world!_ ” She stopped short, then let out a primal, ugly scream.

The rubble shook and began tumbling, shifting; what remained of nearby buildings crashed to the ground, left cracks in the sidewalk and kicked up dust. She screamed and shaped that sound into energy, into power. Let it gloss over her fingertips and become sharp, become deadly.

“Vanya!” Five yelled. “VANYA!”

“What, Five?!”

She turned on him, her heart thumping loud in her head.

“Please! You’ve got to stop! Your hair—”

A lock on the other side of her head was stained white, now, like her power was draining its life. She heaved. “I don’t _care_ about my hair colour, Five! I care about the apocalypse! I _ended_ the _fucking world!”_

Five’s eyes were wide and shining, his entire face so young and naïve and scared. He’d been the smartest of them all, once – but times had changed. Five was still young, a baby, and Vanya was almost thirty; a world destroyer. The city quaked beneath their feet.

“I didn’t know that,” he said, soft. “But I don’t care—I can’t get back to my time and I’m happy—I’m happy that _you’re here._ That I’m not alone!”

“What are you talking about?” she huffed. “Stop—stop messing with my head—”

“I’m not trying to, Vanya! But I don’t know what to do! I’m sorry about Dad! About the rest of us! About your powers! And I’m sorry that you had to go through all this alone—but I’m here now, and I want to _help!_ ”

“How can you help?” she yelled. “You’re not even _real!_ ”

“Of course I’m real!” he shouted back. “I’m as real as you are!”

“No, you’re not! I made you up! I ended the world and I made you up so I wouldn’t be alone anymore!”

“No! Vanya!” he drew closer, his little hands shaking. “I time travelled here. From 2002 – I, I argued with Dad at breakfast, remember? And I left the house, and I time travelled _here._ To this day! To you!”

Vanya remembered the day, of course she did. She remembered the knife in the table, searching the house for him, leaving the light on in case he came back in the dark. They never knew where Five went—until now.

Vanya released a breath. His hair hadn’t been soft because she remembered it that way – it was because it _was_ soft. It _was_ him. He helped lift the bodies because he was real; she could feel him because he was _there._ Vanya swallowed, and the shaking became soft, like a heart beating so quick and so scared.

She held out a hand and touched his damp face.

“You’re real?”

He tried for a smile and missed by a mile. “I’m real.”

*

It was 1963 and JFK would be cruising through Dallas in a parade. The job had to be well-timed; a bullet at the right moment, a distraction at another. Five and Vanya dressed in clothes reasonable for the time and wandered through the crowds to find their good spot. Five was only a few years past forty, some twenty-seven since he appeared in the apocalypse and found his sister distraught and seeing ghosts. Vanya was almost sixty, now, and though her hair had turned fully white in those first few years of struggle, it was finally settling into her.

She nodded to the fence they’d staked out earlier. Five wouldn’t be killing JFK, but instead shooting Jack Ruby, the mobster who would otherwise kill Oswald, the suspected killer, if he didn’t. The timeline didn’t need Ruby killing Oswald, and so Vanya managed the distraction that put Ruby into position for Five, and Five would then take the shot.

“Want some ice cream after this?” Vanya asked, the parade still thirty minutes out.

“If you’re buying.”

She scoffed. “I’m _always_ buying when it’s you. You have Little Brother Syndrome; I don’t think you’ve bought a single thing for yourself in all the time we’ve been together.”

Five rolled his eyes. “Well twenty-five of those years were in an apocalypse, so they don’t count.”

“You always ate the last beans in the can.”

“You let me.”

Vanya shrugged and Five suppressed a grin.

“Get into position,” she told him as she rolled her eyes. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

*

It took a few weeks for Five to get the whole story out of Vanya, and by that point it was more because they’d found a copy of her book (unread) in Dad’s mostly destroyed library, and Five had threatened to just read it if she didn’t tell him herself. So she took him on a twisting journey from the day Five left until the day the world ended, those last few weeks with Dad dying and Leonard stealing her pills and Luther locking her in the basement picked through with a fine-tooth comb.

Five seemed to note everything down, as if he really _was_ going to use his time travel abilities to get back (though he hadn’t yet), and sort this whole mess out in advance. Then, afterwards, she saw him reading her book anyway, glaring at the pages.

She let him read, let him catalogue all the memories she hadn’t told him, and went off to search the nearby hollowed buildings again.

It was a few months in when they found a violin, and then it was like the apocalypse was survivable. Vanya and Five kept their eyes out for extra strings and bows alongside their usual cans and bottled water. They made encampments and when they had taken everything, they moved to a new location.

Five trained in his spacial jumps, started going further and further away from their bases, until he reported that he jumped all the way down to Mexico, which looked much like the New York in terms of doomsday events, and then promptly slept for the next thirteen hours.

They survived, they adapted. Five worked on formulas that would get him back and Vanya worked on mastering her abilities until she could change the weather with the flick of a hand. Her hair slowly lost pigment the better she got, and Five told her about how her eyes turned white and her skin a shade of translucent blue whenever she lost herself to the power.

At some point – Vanya lost track of when – he started teaching her the self-defence Dad would never let her learn. He must’ve been at least fifteen by that point, and his hair was a lopsided mess from when Vanya last cut it, and hers was shorn up by her shoulders in a much neater hack job courtesy of Five.

They started west, as if the end of the world might be a little more pleasant over there; ate bugs and captured the remaining few animals they found, occasionally breeding them if they stayed in the area long enough, usually eating them if they didn’t.

Five made up a song about being the last two people on the face of the planet; tuneless and lilting _the world has ended/so let’s throw a party/we’re literally the only two guesssssts,_ and Vanya played her violin around the campfire at nights, until the hush of the empty world felt especially quiet, like it was purposefully listening to her play.

And they grew older and more adaptable. They ran out of stories to tell so started making some up. Celebrated their birthdays every few seasons when they lost track of the years.

Vanya supposed it could’ve been a lot worse at the end of the world; especially if they were alone.

*

Somehow, it didn’t take long.

Five was waiting behind the fence, his gun steadied on the target, when something went wrong. He didn’t even catch what it was.

First, there was silence, and then _BANG—_

A gunshot. Not his. Not the shooter’s. Kennedy wasn’t even in place yet – JFK wasn’t dead yet – and this event was _wrong._ Five straightened, panicked, searching for the target of the shot, but the crowds that had gathered for the parade were fleeing, a flock of people running every direction. Who had been shot? Where was Vanya?

He dismantled the gun, shoved it back in the bag and hefted it and the briefcase, running fast for the road.

“Vanya?” he called out, but he couldn’t see her shock of white hair, her peach-coloured dress she’d worn for the occasion. He spotted Jack Ruby and his goons running away – that was another failure to the day. “Vanya?”

Five’s heart raced in his chest. It was _Vanya._ She’d surely be fine; she’d _always_ been fine – but she was his sister. She was his last remaining thread of home.

Which was why his entire body crumpled when he spotted her on the ground.

*

There was a third person in the apocalypse.

It couldn’t be true. Couldn’t be _real._ There couldn’t be a third person and she couldn’t look like _that._ Vanya’s clothes were old and torn; she and Five pulled a red wagon of all their worldly possessions, consisting of a prized can of kidney beans, several weapons and mostly destroyed books they read voraciously, again and again. How could this woman be dressed up? How could her hair be so perfect and so clean? And was she wearing _make up?_ Vanya hadn’t seen make up in decades.

“Vanya and Five Hargreeves,” she said, her voice warm in a strangely cold way. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

They’d been in the apocalypse for twenty years. Vanya and Five had been alone for _twenty years._ She and her brother the last people left alive.

Five hefted a large hunting knife they’d sourced several years before. “Who the hell are you?”

“I am a representative of the Commission,” she said. “The overseeing body of the timeline, and it’s _time_ you two got out of the apocalypse for good.”

Vanya and Five glanced at each other, unsure.

“How do you plan to do that?” Vanya asked.

The lady patted her briefcase. “A little bit of science, a little bit of magic,” she replied. “Only, we can’t just do it for free—”

“Of course not,” Five spat.

“We’d like to make you an offer! You come work for us for five years, and we’ll let you retire _anywhere_ you want in the timeline. Just five years of work.”

“What kind of work?” Vanya asked.

“The kind you’d be good at,” she replied.

In the end, Vanya and Five knew they’d do anything to get out of the apocalypse.

*

“Vanya! Vanya, no!” Five skidded down onto his knees beside his sister’s body. Thick red liquid pooled underneath her body, a hole in the right side of her chest.

Vanya’s eyes searched wildly for him before relaxing as they glanced across his face. Her hand flailed and he took it in his, abandoning the cases behind him.

“Fi…ve,” Vanya croaked.

“Vanya, Vanya.” Five squeezed her hand tight. “It’s gonna be okay. _WE NEED HELP OVER HERE! SOMEONE!_ Someone will help us, Vanya, you’ll be okay.”

“Go… home,” she wheezed.

“No, no—not without you. I’m not going anywhere without you— _I NEED AN AMBULANCE! PLEASE!_ Vanya, hey, hey, Vanya. Look at me. Look at me; we’re gonna be alright. You’re gonna be fine, I promise. I’m not leaving you behind.”

He tracked the tear that leaked down towards her temple. Her lips made shapes but he couldn’t hear the sounds. Five leant down; he watched a drip fall on her cheek and realised it was his own tears.

“ _The w…orld ha—s end—ed,”_ Vanya said, barely getting out the words.

Five choked up a sob, he completed the next line: “ _So let’s throw a party.”_ Vanya’s lips tried for a smile. “ _We’re literally the only—the only two guesssssts.”_ Vanya’s eyes didn’t look away from him, so he sang quietly, watching the shine dull. “ _We got no need for money/we’ve just got each other/Vanya and Five are the bessssst._ ”

He finished the song even when Vanya was dead, and then finally sat back. The road was deserted but the high-pitched squeal of an ambulance was growing closer. Too late, though. Far too late.

Five pressed a kiss against Vanya’s forehead, brushing away the white hair she’d grown back out after joining the Commission. He couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t go in the ambulance with her and explain why she doesn’t exist; he had to leave. He had to—he had to go _home._ Just like she said.

Five had never fully figured out the formula for backwards time travel, but there was no better time than now to get it done. Travelling through time was one thing, but it had to be through space, too; the plant revolved around the sun, and the formula had to involve predicting where it would be in the void of space. If he got it wrong, he could end up off-plant and suffocate or freeze within seconds.

But he’d been working on the maths for almost thirty years.

Five took one last look at Vanya, and ran, searching for that part in himself that twisted between the fabric of existence. It unlocked like a latch in his chest, and a blue, swirling portal appeared up ahead, cracking through the air and rippling. Only a few seconds later, a fire extinguisher flew through the portal, but Five didn’t have time to pay attention to it; he leaped through, leaving Vanya’s dead body behind.

The last Hargeeves standing.

*

The portal that had appeared over the courtyard in the middle of Reginald’s funeral was eerily familiar to Vanya, but she couldn’t place how. Not immediately; not until her little brother tumbled through it, and Five, looking exactly as he had at thirteen when she’d last seen him, met her gaze.

“Five?” Allison asked, but the boy didn’t look away from Vanya. He stared at her – had he been _crying?_ His face was damp, his hands stained red. His clothes were too big and there were dark brown patches of wetness at his knees.

“Five,” Vanya breathed. How was he here? He’d been gone _seventeen years,_ since he vanished that day after breakfast. And now he was—

The air left her lungs as Five barrelled straight into her, hugging her tight. He hadn’t been this affectionate when they were kids; he’d never initiated contact. But this was Five, this was her missing brother, so she held him back just as firm. Even as a thirteen-year-old, he reached her height easily.

Five shook in her arms, and Vanya didn’t let go.

“You’re alive,” she whispered. Was this where he ended up after that day? Reginald had been on him not to attempt time travel – but maybe _this_ was where he went. This was where he ended up. Seventeen years later on the day of their father’s funeral.

Five pulled away just to look at her. He sniffed and quickly wiped away his tears with the balls of his hands. It left faint red smears on his cheeks. “You’re here,” he said, trying for a smile. “You all are.” He looked at the others, who’d been watching him hawk-eyed and silent.

“What the hell is going on?” Diego asked, and Five straightened, looking up at the raining lightly falling across them. The portal was long gone, and now they were just six wet siblings and a pile of dirt on the ground.

“I assume it’s Dad’s funeral today,” Five replied, his voice a lot more grown up than Vanya remembered, “which means we have seven days until the apocalypse.” He powered on through their sudden questions. “I already know exactly how it’s going to happen, so it’s not gonna be a problem stopping it. Firstly, though—Vanya.” He looked at her almost like he was looking at someone else; she’d never held an appreciative gaze before, one that said _I’m so glad you’re here right now._ “Do we have any ice cream?”

**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading!!!!! let me know what u thought in the comments
> 
> tomorrow: five & the apocalypse


End file.
